Freedom Rider: Bill Cosby and Michael Brown
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! Then we all run out and are outraged, “The cops shouldn't have shot him.” What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?” – Bill Cosby
“He really only cared about pleasing white people.”
No one is more deserving of public scorn and ignominy than Bill Cosby. The poisonous words he directed at black people make him unfit for sympathy or protection from the group which he has dedicated himself to slandering.
The now infamous speech and Cosby’s recent disgrace are worth remembering in light of the death of Michael Brown. Brown didn’t have pound cake in his hand when he was shot to death by a police man, and he was a small child when Cosby said those words, but he is certainly one of those whom Cosby found unworthy of regard should he be killed by a white man wearing a uniform.
The star who pitched everything from cars to Coke forever changed his image in 2004. He used a 50th anniversary celebration of the Brown v. Board of Education decision to smear black people under the guise of advocating for personal responsibility. His rant was shocking not just because he laid claim to the worst negative stereotypes but also because most black people agreed with his awful assessments of their humanity.
A brief respite from Cosby claiming that people “with names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammad and all of that crap will end up in jail,” came in 2005 when women began to publicly accuse Cosby of drugging and sexually assaulting them. Eventually eighteen accusers came forward. Unfortunately the charges were difficult to prove due to a toxic blend of money, patriarchy and rape culture.
“Cosby didn’t understand that his game was up.”
After a decade of dodging legal and public relations bullets, it was another comedian, Hannibal Buress, who finally brought Cosby down with tPlaceholder teaserPlaceholder bodyhese apt words.
“Bill Cosby has the f—ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate. He gets on TV, ‘Pull your pants up black people, I was on TV in the 80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you rape women, Bill Cosby, so turn the crazy down a couple notches. ‘I don’t curse onstage.’ Well, yeah, you’re a rapist, so I’ll take you saying lots of motherf—ers on Bill Cosby: Himself, if you weren’t a rapist.”
The right words from the right person and the ensuing social media storm accomplished what the victims and their lawyers could not. Now Cosby Show reruns have been pulled off the air and plans for a new situation comedy have been cancelled as the people who previously fed the beast flee in terror of bad publicity. The fall is enjoyable to watch in part because Cosby didn’t understand that his game was up. He still made himself available for interviews and he was so out of touch that he launched a disastrous campaign on twitter, asking for memes as if his old pudding pop commercials would be the subject instead of sexual assault.
Cosby may be confused by age or illness, but the desire to see a black face in a high place creates its own sickness. Tiger Woods openly made racist jokes about black male sexuality to a white reporter but he still became a hero to millions. Barack Obama takes a page from Cosby’s book when he says that black people give their kids cold fried chicken for breakfast yet he is still beloved and defended as if he were a friend and not an enemy.
Bill Cosby has received his just deserts and is now a spent force. He is still a wealthy man but he will never be able to make the deals he did previously. He will never have another television show or book on the best seller list and that is as it should be.
“The desire to see a black face in a high place creates its own sickness.”
In the end, despite his claim of using “tough love” on black people he really only cared about pleasing white people. After George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin, Cosby opined that the killer should not be accused of racism.
"See this racial stuff goes into a whole bunch of discussion which has stuff that you can't prove. You can't prove that somebody is a racist unless they come out and do the act that is found to be that."
The “racial stuff” of stand your ground laws, Martin’s murder, and Zimmerman’s acquittal all clearly point to the unending war of white supremacy against black people. But Cosby knows who can be insulted and who is immune from criticism. He wouldn’t venture a word against white racism, not even in a clear cut case that harkens back to the days of lynch law.
Michael Brown and millions of others brutalized by a racist system are Cosby’s man with the pound cake. The tale is apocryphal but the meaning of it is quite clear. Cosby knows that his bread was buttered only if white people found him acceptable. In his twisted world Trayvon Martin and other victims must be forsaken.
So far Cosby hasn’t made any public comments about Michael Brown or the injustice of his killer getting away with murder. If we are fortunate he will keep his mouth shut on the subject. According to the serial rapist, Brown was just a guy with pound cake who didn’t have any rights that white people needed to respect.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
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